A wide variety of removable storage media exist for use with voice recorders, digital video camcorders, digital cameras, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular phones, video games, digital televisions, photo printers, and the like. The removable storage media allow users to capture and store data on such devices, and easily transport the data between these devices and host computers.
One of the most popular types of removable storage media is the flash memory card, which is compact, easy to use, and has no moving parts. A flash memory card includes an internal, high-speed solid-state memory capable of persistently storing data without application of power. Numerous other types of memory can also be used in memory cards, including electrically-erasable-programmable-read-only-memory (EEPROM), non-volatile random-access-memory (NVRAM), and other non-volatile or volatile memory types, such as synchronous dynamic random-access-memory (SDRAM), with battery backup.
A wide variety of memory cards have been recently introduced, each having different capacities, access speeds, formats, interfaces, and connectors. Examples of memory cards include CompactFlash (CF) first introduced by SanDisk Corporation, the Memory Stick (MS) and subsequent versions including Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Duo developed by Sony Corporation, Smart Media memory cards, Secure Digital (SD) memory cards, and MultiMedia Cards (MMCs) jointly developed by SanDisk Corporation and Siemens AG/Infineon Technologies AQ and xD digital memory cards developed by Fuji. Many other memory card standards continue to emerge and evolve.
Each of the different memory cards typically has a unique connector, which defines the electrical and mechanical interfaces of the card. Moreover, each different memory card generally requires a specialized adapter or reader for use with a host computer. The adapter or reader includes a specialized interface that conforms to that of the memory card and an interface that is configured to be accepted by a host computer. For example, an adaptor or reader may include a device interface to receive a memory card and a host computer interface to connect to a host computer, such as a personal computer memory card international association (PCMCIA) standard including a 16 bit standard PC Card standard and a 32 bit CardBus standard, a Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard, a Universal Serial Bus 2 (USB2) standard, an IEEE 1394 FireWire standard, a Small Computer System Standard (SCSI) standard, an Advance Technology Attachment (ATA) standard, a serial ATA standard, a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) standard, a PCI Express standard, a conventional serial or parallel standard, or the like.
Conventional memory cards have only one connector to interface with a device. The same connector also interfaces with the adaptor or reader to allow the memory card to be read by a host computer. Most conventional adapters and readers support only a single type of memory card, and accordingly, a user may carry and interchange adapters or readers when using different types of memory cards.